In order to form images, a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material is conventionally subjected to a series of processing steps after imagewise exposed to light. More specifically, during a color development step, a color developing agent reduces the exposed silver halide to produce developed silver and the color developing agent per se is oxidized to yield an active oxidized product which reacts with a coupler whereupon a dye is formed. After that, in a silver removing step, developed silver is oxidized with an oxidizing agent (usually called a bleaching agent) and removed upon fixing together with silver halide which has not participated in the color development reaction and remains as is in the photographic material. By these steps a color image is obtained.
In the silver removing step, a bleaching bath or a bleach-fixing bath is employed. One problem that arises when using the latter, is that an inorganic bleaching agent is coexistent with a silver halide solubilizing agent in the same processing solution and the oxidizing power of the inorganic bleaching agent is too strong. Therefore, an organic chelate compound having a weak oxidizing power such as a metallic iron salt of aminopolycarboxylic acid is usually employed as a bleaching agent.
Such a bleach-fixing solution, which originally has only a weak oxidizing power, causes some problems when a short processing time, as used in recent years, is used, since the bleach-fixing bath, upon repeated use, contains developing agent taken from an exhausted developing solution. That is, it causes (1) so-called insufficient color formation in which a satisfactory density is not obtained because some of the cyan dye remains in its leuco form and (2) so-called insufficient silver removal in which silver remains in the photographic material because the silver removing speed for dissolving silver out of the photographic material is reduced.
As a result of investigations by the present inventors, it has been found that slow silver removal also causes delayed conversion of the leuco form of a dye to a cyan dye. Therefore, insufficient silver removal is a major problem that must be considered in designing color photographic light-sensitive materials.
As a silver halide photographic material for obtaining a color print, a color photographic light-sensitive material comprising at least three layers including a red-sensitive emulsion layer containing a cyan coupler, a green-sensitive emulsion layer containing a magenta coupler and a blue-sensitive emulsion layer containing a yellow coupler, provided relative to the incident light of exposure in the above order, is conventionally employed. However, when using a green-sensitive emulsion layer containing a pyrazoloazole type magenta coupler, the silver removing speed is slow in comparison to when a 5-pyrazolone type magenta coupler, which has been heretofore employed is used, probably, because the pyrazoloazole type coupler is apt to adsorb to silver halide particles due to its structural character. As a result, there is a disadvantage in that the silver removing speed of the blue-sensitive emulsion layer which is ordinarily positioned below the green-sensitive emulsion layer is also retarded.
Such a reduction in silver removing speed exerts, practically, a particularly bad influence when a bleach-fixing solution in which only a bleaching agent having a weak bleaching power is employed; particularly, where a bleach-fixing solution containing a small amount of a developing agent (at least 1.times.10.sup.-4 mol of the developing agent per mol of the bleaching agent) carried from the developing bath is used.
On the other hand, a pyrazoloazole type magenta coupler has many advantageous properties. Specifically, a color image obtained therefrom is superior with respect to color reproduction since undesirable absorption in the blue light and red light regions are small in comparison to the undesirable absorption that occurs when a conventional 5-pyrazolone type magenta coupler is used. Further, when a photographic material containing a pyrazoloazole type magenta coupler is exposed to light during storage and/or is stored under high humidity condition, the occurrence of yellow stain in the image formed upon development is small, probably because the coupler per se is stable to light, heat and humidity and hard to decompose.